'm not against pre-arranged techinque drilling, nor against sombrada per say. But too much of it really isn't good imo, and like many things if used properly it can be a useful tool, if not, it can really mess people up.

It is a really good drill to get used to blocking and counter attacking from different positions, but like any other pre-arranged pattern it must be broken out of to be effective. I've seen people do nothing but sombrada, no applications like your video, none of the body positioning or proper checking like you or Ryno pointed out, and they just get stuck in the pattern with bad habits. Its ugly.

Before I saw that video, I never realized that some people actually do drills standing still like that. That looked really weird to me.

The way we do drills is always dynamic and mobile. standing still = getting hit. As the student gets better, the drill has to become more challenging and more unpredictable so he or she doesn't get too comfy with a pattern. Speed increases and you add stuff like witik, punyo and the range has to always be changing. the drills must eventually be able to bridge between corto, media and largo until the range can go from corto to largo and vice versa and the strikes and counterattacks are still there.

But you still need to have drills as a training tool, just not have the everyone really good at a drill and freeze when their partner changes it.

while I'll agree with the old saw "practice makes permanent" I'd have to play devil's advocate and say that you have to walk before you can run. I come from a JKD/Kali class where 3/4 of the class is in the beginning stages of learning the moves in Lameco. Really needing to go slow to learn the motions. Flowing drills like this can be fairly complex at first and adding proper weight, targeting, footwork and asking them to do it all at full speed is damn near impossible. I can speak from personal experience of getting pretty lost in the flowing drills.

On the other hand I fully agree with realism in practice. If you're going to throw a number one, throw it with a bit of force and make sure that the end of the stick is coming towards my temple, otherwise you're just going to pick up bad habits. Also, if you and your partner have been doing K/E/A for more than a couple months and you're still static in your flowing drills, then you deserve to get your ass kicked by your instructor.

The link selfcritical posted above is only to the first half of the thread/discussion. It got much better after that, but I don't think there is a copy anywhere. If I remember correctly, Burton got into the discussion in the second half.

Meex: Burton did give me a chance to explain myself, and I sent him a longer video with more sparring footage to prove my point. His response was that he thought my partner must have been pulling the shots when I was able to crash with the checking hand. Of course I disagree with his response. And, I've never met Burton in person...but have corresponded with him on occasion via email. (I should add that I think Burton is a great guy in honest pursuit of what works. Many people have disagreements.)

thanks for posting. I'm going to start another thread on your knife tapping video as well, which is basically the only where I didn't go "Yes, that's obviously it!", basically mirroring the comments I put up on the youtube video.